David Friedman, Donald Trump’s adviser on Israel, speaking to reporters at a pro-Trump event in Jerusalem, October 26, 2016. (Raphael Ahren/Times of Israel) David Friedman opposes two-state solution, and backs undivided Jerusalem as capital.

The Yesha Council of settlements on Friday praised President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of adviser and long-time friend David Friedman as the next US ambassador to Israel, citing his “knowledge and wisdom of the issues.”

“Friedman has a deep love for all of the land and people of Israel, including those in Judea and Samaria,” said Oded Revivi, the mayor of the Efrat settlement and Yesha’s foreign envoy, in a statement.

“David Friedman is a true friend and partner of the State of Israel and the settlements,” said a statement from Dagan, the head of the Samaria Regional Council in the West Bank. Dagan said Trump’s choice of Friedman shows that the president-elect “intends to be committed to Israel in an honest and genuine way,”

The head of the centrist Yesh Atid party, Yair Lapid, and Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely of Likud praised Friedman’s appointment Friday, as well as Trump’s apparent plan to follow through on his campaign pledge to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“I look forward to working with the new US ambassador, a close friend of Israel, David Friedman, in a place worthy of his office — our capital, Jerusalem,” Lapid said.

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely called the appointment “good news for Israel.” Friedman’s “positions reflect the desire to strengthen the status of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel at this time and an understanding that the settlements were never the real problem in the region,” she said in a statement.

Zionist Organization of America chief Morton Klein, a Trump supporter, said Friedman “has the potential to be the greatest US ambassador to Israel ever.”

Daniel Libeskind-designed Memorial of Names for Amsterdam, in commemoration of 102,000 Dutch Jews and others murdered in the Holocaust (courtesy)

After two years of playing hot potato over a final location, Amsterdam city officials have announced the site for an unprecedented national Holocaust memorial.

Set to include the names of 102,000 Dutch Holocaust victims, the memorial will be built along the city’s Weesperstraat Boulevard, between the world-renowned Hermitage Museum and nearby plush botanical gardens. Across town from the Anne Frank House, Weesperstraat runs through the vanished 'Jodenbuurt' Jewish neighborhood, the pre-Holocaust home of most of the city’s Jews.

maandag 26 december 2016

Archaeologist Limor Talmi was minutes away from wrapping up her excavation of an ancient garbage pit last Thursday, when a piece of 1,600-year-old glass was brought to her, bearing imprints of menorahs.

Leading Dutch politician Geert Wilders has criticized US president Barack Obama for not vetoing the Security Council resolution against Israel on Friday and advised Israel to ignore the UN resolution.

Wilders, the founder and leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, who has dominated Dutch polls during the year of 2016, wrote on his Facebook page:"Obama betrayed Israel. Thank God for Trump. My advise to my Israeli friends: ignore the UN and keep building more and more settlements."

Wilders was voted politician of the year 2016 when 40,000 people participated in the annual public election held by Dutch TV-show ‘EenVandaag’. He is known for his sharp criticism of Islam and his outspoken support for Israel.

Wilders lived in Israel for two years during his youth, working on a moshav, and has visited the country 40 times in the last 25 years.

Wilders has stated about Israel: "I have visited many interesting countries in the Middle East – from Syria to Egypt, from Tunisia to Turkey, from Cyprus to Iran – but nowhere did I have the special feeling of solidarity that I always get when I land at Ben Gurion International Airport." Wilders told audiences in Holland that "We [in the West] are all Israel".

He has also said "Israel is the West's first line of defence" against what he perceives to be a threat posed by Islam and has stated that "Jordan is Palestine. Changing its name to Palestine will end the conflict in the Middle East and provide the Palestinians with an alternate homeland." Wilders has also called on the Dutch government to refer to Jordan as Palestine and move its embassy to Jerusalem.

The UN Security Council voted 14-0 on Friday — with the US abstaining — in favor of an anti-settlement resolution that was vehemently opposed by Israel.

In a statement issued following the vote, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon expressed disappointment in the Obama administration.

“It was to be expected that Israel’s greatest ally would act in accordance with the values that we share and that they would have vetoed this disgraceful resolution,” Danon said. “I have no doubt that the new US administration and the incoming UN secretary-general will usher in a new era in terms of the UN’s relationship with Israel.”

Furthermore, Danon declared, “Neither the Security Council nor UNESCO can sever the tie between the people of Israel and the land of Israel.”

The approved resolution demands, among other things, that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities” in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Ahead of Friday afternoon’s Security Council vote on the resolution, major Jewish and other pro-Israel groups mobilized in an ultimately futile effort to thwart its passage.

Following the vote, US President-elect Donald Trump tweeted tersely, “As to the UN, things will be different after Jan. 20th.”

donderdag 8 december 2016

The sheep have landed. After three years of high-level negotiations between the Israeli and Canadian governments, 119 heritage sheep, which trace their lineage back 5,000 years to the Middle East, began arriving in Israel on November 30. It is the first time that the breed, called Jacob’s sheep, has been represented in Israel since biblical times.

Three of the 11 flights carrying the sheep have already arrived in Israel, according to Gil and Jenna Lewinsky, the shepherds who began raising these ovines on a whim in western Canada. “The first sheep arrived on the Jewish calendar the day that Noah came out of the ark, the 28th of Heshvan,” said Jenna Lewinsky.

“It was beautiful to see them walk on the soil of Israel,” she said. “As a Jewish person I am so connected to the land, but to see the whole project connecting — it’s going to stay with me for the rest of my life.” Jenna Lewinsky immigrated to Israel just three weeks before the first flight of sheep came on their own baa-liyah.

Genetic markings for the breed date back at least a few thousand years to the Middle East. The journey for the sheep began in ancient Syria (also the biblical home of Laban) and passed through North Africa. Moorish invaders brought the breed to Spain, and then to England, where the animal was something of a trophy sheep. A number were brought to North America, originally for zoos and then later for commercial use.

Genetic markings have traced the Jacob sheep from ancient Syria, through North Africa, to Europe and then North America (courtesy Gil Lewinsky)

The breed received the name “Jacob sheep” based on Genesis Chapter 30, where Jacob talks about leaving his father-in-law Laban’s home and taking part of the flock as his payment for years of service. “I will pass through all thy flock today, removing from thence every speckled and spotted one, and every dark one among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats; and of such shall be my hire,” he is quoted as saying in Genesis 30:32.

The path of the breed mirrors the path of Jacob to Canaan and then Egypt. While the Jews were in Egypt, the sheep were incorporated into the North African flocks. Somewhere along the way, although the Jews returned to Israel, the uniquely speckled sheep did not return with them. According to the Lewinskys, the sheep has not been found in Israel for thousands of years.

Gil and Jenna Lewinsky also found meaning in the fact that the first sheep arrived during the week leading up to the reading of the Torah portion of Vayetzei, which is the first time that the uniquely speckled Jacob’s sheep are mentioned in the Torah in Genesis.

Rare, natural phenomenon documented in Jerusalem during the New Year when the shofar in the synagogue - suddenly created an amazing circle of clouds in the sky like opening the gates of heaven. Residents were amazed by the phenomenon. Is It a sign of salvation, the coming of the messiah or mystical explanation other celestial phenomena?

A Syrian military source has said Israeli rockets hit an air base near Damascus. No casualties have been reported.

Reuters reports the Israeli rockets hit the Mezzeh military airport at about 3 a.m. on Wednesday. Syrian state media Syrian Arab News Agency also confirmed the report.

A source said the attack caused a fire but there were no casualties. “Israel launched a number of surface-to-surface missiles.” it said.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman commented on the issue: "We are first and foremost making efforts to maintain the security of our citizens and protect our sovereignty, and trying to prevent the smuggling of sophisticated weapons, military equipment and weapons of mass destruction from Syria to Hezbollah," he said.

woensdag 7 december 2016

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made the following remarks at the state memorial ceremony for David Ben-Gurion:

"Our military force must be strong enough to repel any foe. It must be capable of taking the war to the enemy's territory, as was done in 1956 and in other wars, and it must be capable of threatening the annihilation of whoever threatens to annihilate us. To this end, today we are continuing to cultivate, more than ever, our military and intelligence forces, which in a certain sense, are unrecognizable from what was in Ben-Gurion's time but, I must say, directly follow the strengthening that he began and which has continued until the present.

The IDF has become one of the world's leading and strongest militaries. Our intelligence and preventative units are among the best in the world and whoever threatens our existence places himself in very great danger. We are equipping ourselves with F-35s, submarines, cyber and defensive systems such as Iron Dome, David's Sling and others."

dinsdag 6 december 2016

A reproduction photograph of the late Yonathan Netanyahu, the brother of Bibi Netanyahu. Yoni was awarded the Medal of Distinguished Service for his actions in the Yom Kippur War. He was killed in action during Operation Entebbe at Entebbe airport, by Ugandan soldiers, when the Israeli military rescued hostages after an aircraft hijacking. Netanyahu was the leader of the assault, and the only Israeli military fatality of the raid. February 05, 2009. (Photo: Nati Shohat/Flash90)

maandag 5 december 2016

The video, posted on Thursday by Israel News Online, shows what appears to be an enormous pillar of cloud, dust and rain hovering over the dangerous border between Israel and Syria – in the very same area where ISIS militants had attacked IDF forces for the first time four days earlier.

Most incredibly, the mysterious cloud ended precisely at the border without entering Israel’s Golan Heights region, seeming to afflict the Syrian side while not harming Israel.

“This strange storm of what appears to be dust, cloud and rain did NOT cross the border fence into Israel. It sat like a barrier between ISIS and Israel,”

In the video, dozens of amazed IDF soldiers are shown photographing and taping the bizarre weather phenomenon with their phones.

Commenters had no doubt of what they were seeing, calling the cloud a “miracle” and a “protective occurrence provided by the Almighty.”

vrijdag 25 november 2016

A plot to bomb an Amsterdam synagogue, planned by a Muslim terrorist cell based in the Netherlands — revealed on Thursday in leaked intelligence documents obtained by the Dutch daily De Telegraaf — is simply the latest evidence of the “very unsafe environment for Jews in the country,” a political activist told The Algemeiner.

woensdag 23 november 2016

A very rare handwritten poem by Jewish diarist Anne Frank goes under the auctioneer's hammer Wednesday, amid a flurry of interest which may push the price well above the 30,000 euros ($32,000) reserve.

"These things are so rare that I've never seen anything like it," said Thys Blankevoort, co-director of the Bubb Kuyper auction house based in the western Dutch town of Haarlem.

"Any document that's written by Anne Frank is rare," he told AFP Monday, adding only about four or five items signed by her had come to light in the past 40 years.

"There are some chance finds, some books from the libraries. But these are not manuscripts, they are owner entries," he added, referring to books which have been found with Frank's name written inside.

Dedicated to "Dear Cri-cri," the poem, written in Dutch in black ink on a notebook-size piece of white paper which has slightly discolored with age, is signed "in memory, from Anne Frank."

Frank wrote the 12-line text, dated March 28, 1942, in a friendship book belonging to the older sister of her best friend only three months before she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam.

"The Diary of a Young Girl," which Frank penned while in hiding from June 1942 to August 1944 has sold more than 30 million copies in 67 languages.

She died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany in early 1945 less than a year after the Nazis captured her and just before the end of World War II.

US refusal to supply the IAF with helicopter missiles during Operation Protective Edge necessitated that Israel adapt its Apaches to fire Israeli missiles, enabling a degree of independence on when and where they are deployed.

The IAF has completed modifications to its Apaches helicopters that will enable them to use Israeli—in addition to US-manufactured—missiles as part of a project which has been undertaken over the course of recent months.

The modifications were presided over following a problem which arose during Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014 when US leaders delayed the delivery of US-made Hellfire missiles to Israel due to concerns that Israel would employ them in areas in Gaza containing population centers.

Prior to the changes, Israel's Apaches' main offensive weapon was the Hellfires, rendering their use entirely at the mercy of American decision-making. Now, however Israel has managed to find a way to circumvent similar obstacles in the future by adding equipment capable of firing Israeli-made missiles manufactured by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems—granting it a degree of independence when it comes to their use.

vrijdag 18 november 2016

Then He said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 11 There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and there will be fearful sights and great signs from Heaven. . Luke 21:10

Super Moon over Jerusalem!
The largest since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948!
A prophetic sign of the coming of the Messiah (Yeshua); and the restoration of all things!

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